Follow These Best Practices for Crafting Facebook Mobile Ads

In 2013, mobile devices accounted for more than 50 percent of total traffic to brand websites, and by January 2014, a third of online transactions were made through mobile. As a result, more than 60 percent of businesses have now integrated mobile into their marketing strategies, and this surge couldn’t be more apparent than on Facebook.

Whether you’re looking to drive more installs to your app or more clicks to your website, Facebook’s mobile ad units deliver great conversion rates. With more than 1 billion people now accessing the social network from their phones and tablets every month, and the newly launched mobile Ads Manager, the temptation to experiment with Facebook mobile ads is even greater than before.

Here are some best practices to consider when building your next mobile ad campaign on Facebook.

Keep It Simple

When working with mobile, remember that the competition for viewers’ attention is fierce. Not only do you have limited screen real estate, but you also have a smaller window of time to seal the deal. The reasons consumers use smartphones can be broken down into several different areas, including discovery, shopping, and socializing.

The challenge for marketers is that you don’t know when your ad will appear, and if it shows up during a window of time that’s dedicated to something other than shopping, you’ll want to make sure that your ad is attention-grabbing without being intrusive. Additionally, the messaging within your ad should be easy to understand. Save the metaphors and complex language for other vehicles.

Try, Try Again

You might think of A/B testing as something you do to optimize your landing page or while making changes to your blog. You never know what’s going to work with your audience until you test it, right? Well, that same level of attention should apply to your mobile ads as well. If your ad isn’t delivering the desired results, then it’s time to experiment. Create different versions of the same ad to see which one resonates more.

This means changing the placement and formatting of assets within an ad to maximize its success with specific audiences. For example, try using different images to elicit different responses from viewers.

Always look for ways in which you can tweak your ad copy to be more appealing and relevant to your desired audience. Additionally, pay attention to tone and calls-to-action. These elements can have different results when delivered to different audiences. It’s important to know what works and what doesn’t for your various targets.

Know Your Audience

If this seems like a familiar tip it’s because it is, but it’s so important that it bears repeating. Facebook ads, whether desktop or mobile, perform best when delivered to core segments defined by demographics, affinities, and behaviors. If you want to increase the chances of your ad performing successfully, then it’s best to target your ads to smaller, more specific groups.

Facebook offers dozens of targeting options, including location, gender, interests, education, and mobile device. If you don’t know which of these options make up your target audience, then you need to invest energy in building demographic profiles of your ideal customers before creating ads. Otherwise, your ad strategy is left up to chance.

Once you’ve considered the above best practices, we recommend reading through some of our previous articles for more information about Facebook Ads, including different options to choose from and how to create auto-play video ads that won’t turn-off fans.

Jennifer Beese: Jennifer Beese has worked as a community manager and social media strategist. When she’s not writing, you can find her studying anatomy and physiology—she literally has a skeleton in her closet—or under the stars with her telescope.